The recent photo of Elon Musk standing in a cabinet meeting in T-shirt and ballcap brought back an unpleasant memory for me.
In the spring of 2008, I was summoned to the managing editor’s office to discuss a redesign of the Travel section, which I had been editor of for 18 years. The m.e. sat quietly at her desk while a ballcapped young man I had never seen before explained his plans for my section. These involved discontinuing long travel narratives – three of which had landed in The Best American Travel Writing anthologies – and diminishing my presence. My column, he noted blithely, would now appear below the fold and jump inside.
I had no idea who this man was. I wondered, naturally, about his background – his knowledge of travel writing, his experience of travel. I assumed they were slim, and that he had been given the job of remaking the section primarily because of his age and his presumed ability to connect with younger readers (an oxymoron even back then).
I sat mostly speechless, and with the sudden realization that the world had changed, at least in the newsroom, and that people like me were no longer welcome. A few months later, I was laid off.
In “A Thousand Clowns,” the unemployed writer Murray Burns often goes to the docks in Manhattan to shout “Bon voyage!” at the people leaving on ocean liners. I loved this about Murray, one of my favorite literary characters in high school, but I’ve learned over the years that it’s more fun to watch people arriving.
So I don’t really mind when I have to pick up friends at MIA (as I did last night). I get to the International Arrivals Hall early and wander about, trying to guess the provenances of the people filing out or, sidling up to small groups, the languages being spoken. The last time I was there I got a nice photo of a little girl sitting with her father under a cluster of “Welcome Home” balloons. And then of course there are all the emotional reunions, the lovers’ kisses and the inter-generational, no-holds-barred bear hugs.
Last night, to my dismay, the hall was quiet and there was little to see. When our friends finally emerged, they said their flight from Paris was practically empty. I felt a little cheated.
Yesterday I posted a cartoon I had drawn of two men, one saying to the other: “I’m giving up Trump for Lent.”
Then in the evening (it was still Fat Tuesday) I watched his address to Congress. As he walked into the chamber, I thought he looked quite presidential. At least he wasn’t wearing a cap. Then he started to speak and all sense of him as a statesman, a leader, even a normal human being, immediately vanished.
Over 30 former political dissidents in Poland, including Lech Wałęsa, have written a letter to President Trump expressing their “horror and disgust” at his treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky last week at the White House. In it, they note President Ronald Reagan’s support of Solidarity and his role in bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I was in Warsaw in December, 1981, when martial law was declared – on orders, everyone believed, sent from Moscow – and most of the signers of that letter were rounded up and interned. That Christmas, Reagan asked Americans to put candles in their windows in solidarity with Poland, a gesture that touched Poles deeply. Schools had been closed, to prevent people from congregating, but we still had our annual Christmas party at the English Language College where I taught. “President Reagan says he supports the Polish people and the Polish nation,” one of the teachers said to me, “but not the present government. Isn’t that beautiful?”
I had not voted for Reagan, and yet I had never felt so proud to be an American.
We got home last night at 9:30, just in time to see my three favorite parts of the Academy Awards: Best Live Action Short, In Memoriam, and Best Foreign Film.
This meant that my surprise and outrage at an undeserving winner came before most people’s. I Am Not a Robot was, in my opinion, the weakest of this year’s shorts, a slight story that starts out with promise – a woman unsuccessfully clicking the “I am not a robot” box on her computer screen – and then fizzles into pointless absurdity.
I have not yet seen any of the foreign films that were nominated, though, because I love Iranian cinema, and know that The Seed of the Sacred Fig was filmed in secret in Tehran, with great risk to the cast and crew (many of whom now live abroad), I was pulling for it. But I was happy for the Brazilians.
I love seeing the dead remembered – CBS Sunday Morning now pays homage to the recently departed every week – and there’s something about seeing actors, pictured in their celebrated roles, that’s beautifully uplifting: the realization that, through their movies, they will live on. It is the evening's greatest demonstration of the magic of cinema.
I still go to the movies, and I always sit through the closing credits – unless I need to use the men's room (I’m looking at you, Oppenheimer). I like sitting there as the room slowly – or these days, quickly – empties and letting the power of the movie sink in. Roger Rosenblatt, back when he reviewed movies (I think for The New Republic) stated that one should never talk about the movie, or even express an opinion on it, until one gets outside the theater.
Last night I was rewarded watching the credits roll for A Complete Unknown, not just because they were accompanied by Timothée Chalamet singing “Blowing in the Wind,” but because, in a beautiful voice, the woman in front of me sang along with him.